While the last couple of months since the budget adoption have been generally light, this agenda is full of substantive issues that will take time to present and discuss. With an evening meeting, it will be interesting to see what gets cut short or continued. I urge you to email City Council if you have comments or input for any of the items. The easiest way to reach all council members is to email tampacitycouncil@tampagov.net

Budget Analyst

This is a new position the Charter provides for that City Council hasn’t put into effect until this year. Council member Carlson has brought it up on numerous occasions over the past few years and it was something I advocated for during the budget process. I was very worried after voting against the millage increase a symbolic gesture would be to cut the role. I’m thankful they didn’t. I wasn’t familiar with the position beyond generally understanding their role was to be a full time staff member assisting council members in navigating government budgets. On an unrelated search, I discovered the Independent Office of Budget Analyst for San Diego and I believe that should be the goal for the city of Tampa. I’m sure there are other cities that have similar programs we can model if after but if we were to have the public reports and guides like San Diego, we would not suffer the same budget process as last year again.

Contract Admin

How the city hires contractors from small projects to multi-million, the process has been broken and antiquated. New personnel and pushes from Council have led to the presentation set for Thursday outlining proposed changes.

CIP Update

This one is confusing. The backup docs are from the presentation January 23. Generally budget updates are regular meeting items. Will be interesting to see what is actually presented and discussed. Also worth noting—the presentation from Jan has a slide about a fire station that was a point of contention during the last budget talks.

Sexual Predator Housing in Ybor

This has been an issue before Council on and off for years. This is a systemic issue that will not be solved Thursday but I expect it to garner a lot of public input.

Entertainment Districts

This was an idea from Council members Carlson and Gudes that has been kicked down the road for over a year. There was some confusion over noise ordinances and the idea of how or if the city could create incentives in another part of town other than Ybor to encourage development of an entertainment district. Would require staff to identify underdeveloped areas that are zoned appropriately. I believe after the shooting in Ybor this conversation will gain steam.

Promote Housing

This seemed innocuous. Council basically asked staff “hey, is there anything we can do in the next six months to speed up development (housing) in areas that can support density?” Staff decided that was too broad and have asked clarifying questions. Which is to say, no, there’s nothing council can do in six months to expedite housing development. But expect a lot of big ideas to be thrown around only to be shot down by reality.

Updates Land Development Code July 23 Cycle

These have been before Council before with opportunity for public input. If anything, items on this agenda item are aimed at the goal of “promoting housing in denser areas” as much as anything.

Planned Developments

Developers love them, council and the public hate them. Something intended for larger scale developments has been used to skirt residential zoning requirements leaving us with patchwork make-it-up-as-you-go development patterns. I have suggested a minimum lot size would eliminate 80% of the problematic applications I have observed. The developer community blames the existing code and say they have no choice. The reality is if they can’t use PDs to turn a single lot into two oversized townhomes they will figure out how to build to code.

Tree canopy report

The motion is for staff to present 5 year tree canopy report and the supporting doc is a presentation from 2021 on the canopy status. Not sure why this is on the agenda. One question I would have is the 2021 report discusses a Natural Resources Advisory Council. I haven’t heard that mentioned in the last 2 years and wonder what came of it.